Regional Associations: Ban Wallace and friends, not TTFA

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Walter Alibey - Senior Sports Reporter

20200520063044

20200521

There is now a col­lec­tive call by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of four out of the six re­gion­al as­so­ci­a­tions - South­ern FA (SFA), East­ern FA (EFA), Cen­tral FA (CFA) and the East­ern Coun­ties Foot­ball Union - for the oust­ed T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) ex­ec­u­tive to face the penal­ty for the coun­try if it is to be banned for vi­o­la­tion of the FI­FA Statutes.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Wednes­day, Shymdeo Go­sine, pres­i­dent of CFA to­geth­er with EFA pres­i­dent Kieron Ed­wards, Ter­rance Quashie of the East­ern Coun­ties, and Richard Quan Chan, pres­i­dent of the SFA have cham­pi­oned the call for the Unit­ed TTFA team to be banned and not the TTFA.

How­ev­er, Har­vey Jack, who spoke on be­half of the To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TFA), de­spite the fact that the As­so­ci­a­tion don't have an ex­ist­ing ex­ec­u­tive, said while he does not sup­port a de­ci­sion for the coun­try to be banned, he is sup­port­ing the prin­ci­pled stand be­ing tak­en by Wal­lace and his team.

Fed up that they would not be giv­en a fair tri­al by the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) to fight against, what they con­sid­er to be, an un­fair de­ci­sion by foot­ball's supreme body - FI­FA - to re­place their de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive with a FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee on March 17, the Unit­ed TTFA team of for­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his vice-pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillip and Su­san Joseph-War­rick, on Mon­day agreed to take its bat­tle to the High Court in Port-of-Spain, which was a di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion and FI­FA Statutes, which po­si­tions T&T to be banned.

How­ev­er, the mem­bers of the re­spec­tive re­gion­al as­so­ci­a­tion said the de­ci­sion by Wal­lace and com­pa­ny was not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty, or ei­ther the Board of Di­rec­tors, who are the de­ci­sion-mak­ing team in lo­cal foot­ball.

Quan Chan, Quashie, Ed­wards and Go­sine all said their as­so­ci­a­tions were nev­er con­sult­ed be­fore the de­ci­sion was made, and there­fore, they do not sup­port it.

Go­sine, the CFA boss said the rule states clear­ly that au­to­mat­ic sus­pen­sion will be hand­ed down to the Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion that car­ries FI­FA to the lo­cal court.

“Then why do we have peo­ple, who claim to care about foot­ball, who would make such a de­ci­sion and get our coun­try banned. Tell me who is ad­vis­ing them, tell me where is the think­ing?”

He calls on the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU), CON­CA­CAF and whichev­er oth­er en­ti­ty that could help them con­vince FI­FA, that if it is con­sid­er­ing ban­ning T&T, then it (FI­FA) should ban the mem­bers in­di­vid­u­al­ly in­stead.

“Keep them out of T&T foot­ball be­cause they are not think­ing about the ef­fect it would have on the coun­try and foot­ballers as a whole. For me, they are all self­ish,” Go­sine said. “We need to sep­a­rate these peo­ple from foot­ball. We have gone past this fight against FI­FA for a long time be­cause we know that FI­FA can help us, so we must sup­port the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee.”

Ed­wards, the EFA boss said his as­so­ci­a­tion is set to have an emer­gency meet­ing to dis­cuss the de­ci­sion to go to the high court and whether the Unit­ed TTFA had al­so vi­o­lat­ed its own con­sti­tu­tion, apart from the FI­FA statutes.

Ar­ti­cle 67 of the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion states: “In ac­cor­dance with the rel­e­vant pro­vi­sions of the FI­FA Statutes, any ap­peal against a fi­nal and bind­ing de­ci­sion passed by FI­FA, CON­CA­CAF or the Leagues, shall be heard by the CAS un­less an­oth­er ar­bi­tra­tion tri­bunal has ju­ris­dic­tion in ac­cor­dance with Art. 69. CAS shall not, how­ev­er, hear ap­peals on vi­o­la­tions of the Laws of the Game and sus­pen­sions of up four match­es or up to three months (ex­cept for dop­ing de­ci­sions). 2 TTFA shall en­sure its full com­pli­ance and that of all those sub­ject to its ju­ris­dic­tion with any fi­nal de­ci­sion passed by a FI­FA body, by a CON­CA­CAF body, by the Ar­bi­tra­tion Tri­bunal recog­nised by TTFA or the CAS.”

Ed­wards said all this will be dis­cussed as well as the fact that no com­mu­ni­ca­tion, ad­vice or con­sul­ta­tion was made with his as­so­ci­a­tion and they, there­fore, view the de­ci­sion to go to the high court as a reck­less one. Like Go­sine, he said he sup­ports the call for in­di­vid­ual sanc­tions on the mem­bers who de­cid­ed to go to the high court and not on the coun­try.

Should T&T be banned by FI­FA, there will be no fu­ture for the young play­ers try­ing to com­pete at the CFU, CON­CA­CAF, Women's tour­na­ments, as well as the CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup, FI­FA World Cup Qual­i­fiers and In­ter­na­tion­al Club com­pe­ti­tions.

Mean­while, both Quan Chan and Quashie made it clear they will not sup­port any de­ci­sion that will re­sult in T&T foot­ball be­ing sus­pend­ed. Both said since the de­ci­sion was made by the few mem­bers, then they should face the penal­ty, as their de­ci­sion was not made with the in­volve­ment of the SFA or East­ern Coun­ties.

Quashie said he be­lieves Wal­lace was neg­a­tive­ly in­flu­enced. The coun­try faces a pos­si­ble ban by FI­FA, sim­i­lar to sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries that have been sus­pend­ed by the world gov­ern­ing body in­clud­ing In­done­sia, Pak­istan, Nige­ria and Cameroon, among oth­ers.